


A Midnight Clear

by elwenyere



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Cabin Fic, Christmas Fluff, First Kiss, Getting Together, M/M, Mutual Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-26
Updated: 2020-12-26
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:01:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28332777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elwenyere/pseuds/elwenyere
Summary: “Remind me never to sign up for a mission on Christmas again,” Tony groaned as he eased his way back under the blankets. He settled in a few feet away from the small mountain of fabric surrounding Steve, only to wince when a spring in the couch connected with his bruised tailbone. “I’m getting too old for this.”It had been an offhand comment, but when he looked over, he saw that Steve was regarding him steadily, his face illuminated by the new blaze of the fire.“What would you do if you left the team?” Steve asked.
Relationships: Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 27
Kudos: 162





	A Midnight Clear

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the anonymous reader on Tumblr, who asked for the holiday prompt "quiet and rest." I hope they and you all enjoy.

“That’s a lot of kindling,” Steve observed. “You sure the fire’s going to get enough oxygen?”

“I’m sorry. Did you want to do this?” Tony retorted.

He turned away from the wood-burning stove to quirk an eyebrow at Steve, who was still burrowed under the blankets they’d found in the closet.

“No,” Steve admitted with a small smile, hunching himself even deeper into a green flannel duvet.

They’d needed the full stack of blankets when they first arrived at the hunting cabin. Both of them had been bruised, a little battered, and near-hypothermic after a freak blizzard had forced a change in the extraction plan for their last mission: a particularly painful downgrade from “feet warmers and hot coffee on the quinjet” to “four-hour search through the woods for any signs of human habitation.” But Steve, who had never quite succeeded in hiding how tense cold-weather ops made him, had needed the signs of warmth even more than Tony. If the shivers rattling his teeth as he searched the yard for fallen branches hadn’t been proof enough, the fact that he’d let Tony volunteer to start the fire would have clinched it.

“Then quit micromanaging and concentrate on knitting that left ankle back together,” Tony said. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you favoring it.” He settled two larger logs into place around the pyramid of kindling, blew once on the first coals to encourage them, and then closed the door and opened the vents.

“Remind me never to sign up for a mission on Christmas again,” Tony groaned as he eased his way back under the blankets. He settled in a few feet away from the small mountain of fabric surrounding Steve, only to wince when a spring in the couch connected with his bruised tailbone. “I’m getting too old for this.”

It had been an offhand comment, but when he looked over, he saw that Steve was regarding him steadily, his face illuminated by the new blaze of the fire.

“What would you do if you left the team?” Steve asked.

“What – you’ve already got my replacement lined up?” Tony grinned. “Rhodey’s older than I am, you know, and he walks like the Tin Man for a full day if he falls asleep on the couch for too long. Don’t let him pull that ‘clean living’ line on you.”

“Nothing about you is replaceable, Tony,” Steve insisted, and Tony wondered when that voice – so gentle and stubborn and unworried – was ever going to stop making his heart leap into his throat. “I’m asking what _you_ want. Where would you be next Christmas if you could have any life you dreamed of?”

Tony paused for a moment, pretending to look at the progress of the fire to buy himself some time. Probing conversations with Steve were no longer rare. These days, Tony often found himself looking for Steve when he needed to untangle thoughts that had gotten snarled up in his mind. Or else Steve would show up in Tony’s workshop with his hands fisted on his hips, and Tony would launch into a monologue until Steve had loosened up enough to complain about the SHIELD meeting – or to admit that Peggy had forgotten who he was for a full hour during his last visit. But Steve had never started a discussion that put such direct pressure on the one place where their deepening friendship bruised and didn’t heal: on the place where Tony dreamed of what he knew he couldn’t have.

“I don’t know what I’d do,” Tony answered finally. “When Pepper and I were together, I thought about trying the whole picket-fence deal. If the picket fence were a self-sustaining energy field with adaptable motion detection, of course: I’ve got standards.”

“Of course,” Steve acknowledged.

“Now?” Tony mused. “I guess I mostly just dream about rest.”

Steve’s brow furrowed, and Tony could see the muscles along his jaw working as he stared down at the blankets between them.

“What about you, Cap?” Tony asked, trying to draw Steve out of whatever hole his eyes seemed to be boring into the couch.

“Sam asked me about retiring once,” Steve said slowly. “I couldn’t picture it at all – didn’t even know where to start. That bothered me for a while because I thought maybe I had lost myself in the fight. But now I think it’s because I found myself there. I couldn’t build a home in D.C. or Brooklyn because I already had one. I had it the moment we stood together against the Chitauri in New York. Just took me a while to realize it.”

Steve looked up at him, his jaw still set but his gaze soft and clear.

“I want that for you, Tony,” he said. “You deserve it. Even if wecan’t – even if _I_ can’t give it you.”

Steve’s cheeks flushed for the first time since they’d stepped off the quinjet into the tundra surrounding the HYDRA base, and Tony blinked in confusion. Steve was fidgeting too, chewing slightly at the bottom of his lip, but Tony couldn’t seem to connect the sudden shift in behavior to what Steve had said – because what had Steve said, exactly?

“What are you saying exactly?” Tony asked, because the cold seemed to be making him sluggish, and it had been sixteen hours and twenty-three minutes since he’d last had coffee, so maybe the direct approach was best.

“I want you to have someone,” Steve managed, “who makes you feel at home – the way you make me feel.”

And okay, the way Steve was holding his gaze as he said it really did seem fairly definitive, Tony supposed. Sorted alongside the other evidence, that look and those words certainly seemed to point toward a specific conclusion. But it was a conclusion that Tony had rejected a long time ago, and putting it back into the equation required digging through years of discarded data – or gathering new.

Tony leaned across the couch, searching under the blankets until he could rest his hands on Steve’s shoulders.

“Tony?” Steve asked, his voice a little faint.

“There’s something I haven’t tried,” Tony explained, “in terms of the…life dreams thing. I didn’t know it was on the table, but if it is, I’d like to –”

He used his grip on Steve’s shoulders to ease himself forward, pausing when his lips were just an inch away from Steve’s, offering Steve a chance to shift away. But Steve was already moving toward him, his hands coming up to cup the sides of Tony’s face and pull him into a kiss. It was gentle and quiet, each press of lips or brush of noses bringing a tingle of warmth back to the places where their skin had been exposed to the cold.

They didn’t pull apart as much as they curled inward, Tony sliding down onto Steve’s chest as Steve wrapped his arms around Tony’s shoulders. Steve adjusted the flannel duvet around Tony’s neck and then let his hand rest there, his fingers weaving into Tony’s hair.

“Steve,” Tony whispered, his voice barely rising above the crackle of wood in the stove, “next Christmas I want to be here, just like this – with you.”


End file.
